Reply #7: It's in effect now, but there are no precinct count scanners or DREs yet, [View All]

[Bill Bored]

except for a few DREs in one county that will have to add VVPAT printers or be replaced.

Actually Gary, the misinformation about the safety of optical scan is being promoted by some activists even more than by politicians. The pols are just parroting what they think the people want to hear.

No one disputes that scanners are preferable to DREs, but while there will be a 3% audit, other checks and balances are necessary and they have not been designed yet.

There is a law requiring 800 test votes a year to be cast on every machine but that's not necessarily using the actual ballots for a given election. So there are still a lot of things to be worked out by regulation before we replace a single lever machine.

That's why in 2006, we will be hand counting paper ballots marked by Automark, Avante and Populex ballot markers for the disabled.

That said, op scans are used to count Absentee ballots, which in our state is considered the number 1 potential source of election fraud! It's unthinkable to us that there are states where you can cast absentee ballots without actually having to be ABSENT or disabled! And early voting is almost as bad.

On eidt: I'm pretty sure that since the absentees are not a LOT of ballots, they are hand counted in close elections where they might change the outcome.